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Tag Archive for David Keren

I’m as guilty as the next person with regards to phone use. My weekly checker tells me if I’ve spent more time on my phone this week than last, and I feel relief when the numbers move down. Should we feel guilty though? Is phone use a bad thing? The headlines flip-flop back and forwards with regards to children and screen time – children need to be tech savvy, ready for a changing workplace, and yet social media is damaging their mental health, their brains are rewired with over-use of the phone, their concentration spans zapped. Which of the screaming headlines is true? It’s a question that dogs this moment in time – perhaps even more than Brexit.

Keren David has written a fascinating novella that more than lives up to its topical and intriguing premise: Could you live without your phone for six weeks?

When an eccentric entrepreneur challenges teenagers in a school to give up their phones, offering a cash incentive (£1000 for six weeks), it’s not wholly surprising that many don’t participate. Esther gives it a try, wanting to use the money to visit her sister and father in America. But of course, with most of her friends on their phones, what will she miss, and can she stay the course?

Esther is introduced to the reader as an average Year 11 student: she takes validation selfies – seeking her friends’ advice on what to wear before going out, she has major FOMO (fear of missing out), and she uses her phone to stay in close contact with her older sister, who has moved to New York. She misses her terribly and their relationship is crucial to her wellbeing.

So when she gives up her phone, she is inevitably going to miss out on friends’ interaction and gossip, and on her relationship with her sister – after all, old-fashioned snail mail is exactly that – slow. But David goes much deeper, exploring all the elements she misses out on by sacrificing her phone, and all the benefits she reaps.

Yet this isn’t an essay of pros and cons, this is a concisely written story about fully-rounded people with whom the reader can identify, with advantages and disadvantages of life without a mobile phone carefully extrapolated and interwoven into the story. What’s more, David probes deeper into the more nuanced arguments around social media – whom to trust, tech giants’ motivations for making their products and the software within, and issues around privacy.

This last issue is particularly pertinent to one character – a crossover from another Karen David book called The Liar’s Handbook, in which she investigated undercover policemen who fathered children with unsuspecting women. The boy, River, features as the protagonist in that story, and a secondary character in this, and David deftly explores his ongoing sense of mistrust of those in positions of authority, and his influence on Esther, in a lovely twist on the ‘disconnectivity’ in the title here, seeing as the books are so neatly connected.

There’s a lively authenticity to the setting here too – London feels very much alive, and in particular the café that Esther’s stepfather runs, and David deftly depicts the Middle Eastern food with mouth-watering descriptions.

The little details are carefully thought out – Esther and her peers are self-conscious about using their voice – so much of their interaction comes from texting and written language – and they are also self-conscious about their appearances, stemming from a constant need to monitor who says what about how they look. Social media accentuates social groupings, instant gratification, knowing stuff about people that usually would take time, or that wouldn’t even be known.

But there’s also a brilliant summation of the emotional importance of Facetiming a relative who lives far away but stays close to the heart, and the usefulness of knowledge at one’s fingertips.

In the end, David portrays a good equilibrium in her answers. Esther comes to understand the uses and abuses of her phone. There’s loneliness both with her phone and without it; everyone needs to appreciate solitude and understand its difference from loneliness. And Esther has a new-found understanding that self-worth doesn’t just come from other people’s online likes and comments. Offline interactions are just as important, although interestingly can be damaging too, but it’s those ‘real-life’ face-to-face connections with family and friends that build confidence and self-belief and help a person to sustain them. Through real-life human interactions we form resilience and find confidence within ourselves. Taken all together, facial expressions, tactileness, actual physical presence and words spoken can mean much more than a text or a Facetime conversation. It is no coincidence that when writers write their characters, they use the full gamut of senses – they explore the character’s body language, facial expressions, the physical presence in a scene including scents, flavours, touch, sound and words spoken. Esther will come to find that she can choose an outfit without using validation selfies and waiting for likes.

Mainly though, time away from the phone gives Esther space to think and to read a physical book, an appreciation of a calmer, quieter, slower way of living, and the overriding message is that some degree of disconnectivity is healthy.

This is a thoughtful read but also a gripping one – will Esther win her money, and will it have been worth it? You’ll want to disconnect yourself for a while just to find out. Click the button to ‘connect’ you to a bookshop here!